Checking in from Boulder

Yesterday was one friggin long-ass day.  Left Santa Fe at 7, got in Boulder at 5:15.  The standard route would have had me take I25 N from Santa Fe and continue on across the Raton Pass and up into the Denver area through Colorado Springs.  Dull and some nasty traffic through CSP and Denver.

So I took US285 mostly, up through Alamosa and then crawled up and down over several passes and even more "hills."  The first part of the day was great: tooling along classic western 2-lane blacktop in  high plateau.  The second was not so great.  The road surface was generally rough, and the resultant vibration set Emma's teeth on edge; her whining (in spite of the sedative) set mine on edge. And when I hit Boulder in multi-lane rush hour traffic it was NOT a good time.

By the time I got to Mike's house I wasn't fit company for man nor beast.  And Emma did her "I don't like this strange place and there's only skittery hard floors" number.  I gave her a nighttime sedative and threw her on my bed.  She woke up at 3; so did I.  But in the course of the morning we both chilled out.  She spent some fun time romping with Louie, Donna's dog, and walked into Mike's house like she lived there.  I'm hoping she'll just be a normal laid-back Lab this weekend, when Mike gets to take care of her while I'm in Denver.

The Beast was parked at an angle last night; as a result, the refrigerator wasn't refriging all that well this morning.  It's currently parked on the level near Donna's place, and my frozen food is in her freezer. Hope that by the end of the day the box is back to icy.

I'm not sure what the lesson is from yesterday.  Was the great morning worth the difficult afternoon?  Or would it have been better to just take the freeway and save more than an hour and a lot of aggravation?  Dunno.

And will the refrigerator fix itself?  We'll see.

Mike is due to take me out to lunch.